What Does It Mean To Be An Eclipse Project?

Earlier this week, jaxenter.com
reported that Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems
Tim Bray had posted a blog discussing where Enterprise IT were going
“billions and billions of dollars worth of wrong.” One of his major
bug-bears, was that web-based developers could “deploy better
systems at less cost in less time at lower risk than we see in the
Enterprise.”

In response to Bray’s post, former Director of Committer
Community at the Eclipse Foundation Bjorn Freeman-Benson re-posted
Bray’s advice on his own blog. He went one step further, claiming that
“it should take no more than 15 minutes to start a new project (or
new projects will go to github).”

Intriguingly, Eclipse CDT Project Lead Doug Schaefer commented
on Freeman-Benson’s post. “My understanding is that something like
this is coming for Eclipse. Stay tuned,” was his cryptic reply.

This has spurred Freeman-Benson into writing a follow-up blog, based on the theory that “soon
we’ll be able to create Eclipse projects in less than 15 minutes.”
In it, Freeman-Benson wonders “what does it mean to be an Eclipse
project?” He lays down six requirements Eclipse projects had to
fulfil in the past:

“Source repository at eclipse.org (CVS or SVN)

Mailing lists, newsgroups and forums at eclipse.org

Following the Eclipse Development Process (committer elections,
release reviews, etc)

Clearing all code through the Eclipse IP Process

An opportunity to be part of the annual coordinated
release

A select few projects can be part of the standard distro.”
Bjorn Freeman-Benson.

Freeman-Benson then factors in the advent of Eclipse Labs and
the assumption that soon developers will be able to “create Eclipse
projects in less than 15 minutes.” This leads him to the conclusion
that four of the six requirements will no longer be required. These
four are:

“Source repository at eclipse.org (CVS or SVN)

Mailing lists, newsgroups and forums at eclipse.org

Following the Eclipse Development Process (committer elections,
release reviews, etc)

Clearing all code through the Eclipse IP Process.” Bjorn
Freeman-Benson.

He concludes that, if these four requirements are to be dropped,
it would mean that “if your project is Eclipse related and open
source, you can be an Eclipse project.” He calls this state of
affairs “Foundation as a Service.” To him, Foundation as a Service
is where projects can “subscribe to whichever of the Foundation
processes and infrastructure is best suited to that project.” He
suggests that each project could have badges on its project page,
indicating which services and characteristics it adheres to. He
envisions that in this system, “some badges would be
algorithmically determined (active), some by the Foundation (ip
clean), and some by the community (well documented.)”

Ultimately, he sees the Eclipse Labs, combined with the hinted
shortening of Eclipse project start-up times, as a:

“great way to expand and extend the Eclipse ecosystem. It allows
the Foundation to do that which the Foundation is good at while at
the same time broadening the definition of what it means to be an
Eclipse project.” Bjorn Freeman-Benson.

Dann Martens agreed wholeheartedly with Freeman-Benson’s call
for Eclipse Labs to be integrated as part of the existing Eclipse
infrastructure, as oppose to running parallel to eclipse.org:

“Even if that second one proves less restrictive, it still makes
no sense at all. If one would object to participate in eclipse.org
directly, why would they feel Eclipse Labs is a better alternative?
The only value lies in being part of eclipse.org; that’s why people
are proposing to make that experience more rewarding.” Dann
Martens.

“Your post is unfortunately off the mark because it makes an
incorrect assumption. EclipseLabs projects are not going to be the
same thing as Eclipse projects. As a result, what you have outlined
here does not closely match the reality of where we’re headed.”
Mike Milinkovich.

Eclipse are expected to make an announcement regarding Eclipse
Labs at EclipseCon until March, giving the community plenty more
time to speculate on how the proposed project will interact with
eclipse.org